“Goodbye,” he says in a wet voice.
I yank the skull free and lift it to the sky.
GOING HOME, UGLY STICK IN HAND
You start in the sporting goods store, testing one wooden bat after another until you find one that feels good and sturdy. Heavy. A few practice swings tell you the weight is just fine. Some electrical tape wrapped around the neck, and it’ll hold up good. At least for a few good whacks.
You pay for the bat and visit the hardware store to get nails. Good ones. Big, gleaming, fuck-you nails. The box costs a few bucks, the hammer and tape a few more. Everything goes in the passenger seat, and you head for home.
Two glasses of whiskey later, you hammer the last of the nails into the bat’s head. If it wasn’t a weapon before, it sure as hell is now. A real ugly stick. The black spiral of tape at its neck blurs as you swing, really swing, putting everything you’ve got into it, because anything less won’t get the job done. Anything less will get you killed.
Like Chris.
Chris was there when it happened all those years ago. He stood beside you, maybe a little behind, one hand clamped tight on your shoulder, so tight it hurt. You didn’t notice, though. Not until later when you took off your shirt, wincing, and saw the bruises in the shape of his fingers. You hadn’t noticed before because you couldn’t take your eyes off the old man in the ravine. He held your gaze as he moved toward you, maybe crawling or maybe dragging himself. It was so hard to tell. You wanted to escape, wanted it more than anything else in the world. You didn’t run, though, and neither did Chris.
You knew what happened to people who tried to run.
“We have to,” Chris said, and you knew he was telling the truth. Your spine threatened to turn to water, and when you picked up the log that felt wet with rot, your hands refused to close all the way. Still, you agreed, nodding your head as you hefted the log and waited for the withered man to draw closer.
He approached slowly, with a lurching, sorrowful pace that nailed both of you to the ravine’s floor. Even if you changed your mind and decided to run, you couldn’t. The thing that lived in the ravine—that waited in a stand of trees, soaking in the shadows—wouldn’t let you. As the old man drew closer, rasping past pale lips like drawn parchment, you heard a whining sound escape you, and Chris squeezed your shoulder harder, trying to give you his strength.
“Do it,” he whispered.
Instead, you collapsed to your knees. The man pushed a slopping tongue past his empty gums and wet his lips, as though it might help him speak, and the sound matched the wet noise his body made as it shifted over grass and dead leaves. Milky eyes narrowed and then widened, and if the man hadn’t been trying to beg, you would have sworn he smiled.
Black beetles skittered over the backs of your hands, over the man’s skin as he came closer. Their footsteps turned to thunder in your ears.
“No.” Your own voice was a croak, a prayer. Something rustled in the trees. Please don’t kill me.
The man reached for you with one muddy hand like a broken claw.
And Chris stepped past you, a large rock in his hands.
You toss the ugly stick in the trunk before climbing behind the wheel. Years have passed since the last time you were pulled over, but a nail-studded bat isn’t the kind of thing you want riding shotgun on the off chance a cop catches you doing ten over the limit. You imagine yourself trying to explain it to a hard-ass wearing mirrored shades, and you almost smile. If not for the twisting knot of dread in your gut, you just might crack a grin.
You wish you had somebody to say goodbye to. A wife, a girl. Even a friend. Instead, all you got is a dirty postage stamp of an apartment, a collection of dust with your name written in it. You stand at the door for a long moment, trying to decide whether you should bother locking it behind you. Finally, you turn and walk to your car, leaving the door wide open. What’s the point? You ain’t coming back from this.
As you climb behind the wheel and try to stab the key into the ignition with a shaking hand, you wonder if anybody’s watching you, if they can see how scared you are. It doesn’t matter, you tell yourself. Nothing matters right now but heading home and confronting the monster.
Moments later, you turn west onto the county road and hit the gas. Your chest tightens around your heart. Four hours until you reach your hometown. Four hours until you find out if the ugly stick is enough.
Chris’s sister Marie called to tell you about it. She’d found him the day before, gone to check on him because he hadn’t answered the phone in almost a week. You listened close, ignoring the cold sweat on your face and back as Marie tried not to scream again, as you prayed Chris had just gone on another bender.
No luck there. She said somebody had torn him apart, just ripped him open and stretched his insides from one end of his trailer to the other, stretched him out like taffy.
Somebody, she said.
You knew better.
She asked if you’d come into town for his funeral. Closed casket, of course, but she didn’t really know who else to invite, what with so few people left in Dawson, and she thought Chris should have at least a few mourners there. You asked about the town, and she said it was dried up and close to dead. She talked about it a little, using words like disappearance and abducted, but that was only because she doesn’t know how things really work. Marie never had to go into the ravine or see why there were so many black beetles in town. She never had them crawl over her hands while Chris walked past her to do what she couldn’t.
You told her you’d be in town for the funeral. Two days, sure. She didn’t need to know you might be dead by then. Because once she told you about Chris, you knew. Time to screw up some courage and see about putting things right.
Courage is all hopelessness has left you.
The sign at the edge of town used to read Welcome to Dawson, but now it’s just sun-bleached metal. What used to be lettering is now just a sickly smear of drab color. You slow the car just a little as you pass it, and you find yourself wishing the ugly stick wasn’t in the trunk. If you could just touch it, maybe you wouldn’t be so scared.
You shove the thought to one side. The ugly stick has a purpose, and it isn’t to make you feel better. Sooner or later you’ll need the stick, but the time hasn’t come yet. Still, you have a feeling the wait won’t be long.
A minute later, you sit at one of the two traffic lights that mark downtown. It’s the only one that still works, and it flashes red at you like a bored bully. There’s no real heart in it, no need or desire, just routine. You look around, taking in the dead, dusty street. Except for a single storefront, everything is abandoned, windows covered with soap or dirt or just bad memories. No people on the sidewalks, no cars on the road. Dawson has died a slow death, eaten up by a cancer you and Chris were supposed to treat.
Something catches your eye. Movement. You look and see a single black beetle skitter across the street and then onto the sidewalk. For a second you wonder if it saw you, if maybe it’s reporting back, and you consider getting out of the car and stomping on it. That’s a bad idea, though. A useless idea. Whatever stretched out Chris’s insides already knows you’re here. Some things you can’t hide from. Not forever.
Your eyes shift and find the only open business in town. When you see it’s the bar, a place called The Shamrock that’s been open since before you were born, you almost chuckle. Then, you realize it’s too sad, and you bite back everything.
The Shamrock smells like hot dirt. No one sits inside, and the woman tending bar looks like a mummy in the yellow light. You’ve never seen so much light in a bar, and you’re wondering how that makes any amount of sense when the bartender sets a bottle of beer on the chipped mahogany and pops the top.
“Welcome home.”
“Thanks.” If you know her from some time in the past, you can’t place her.
Her hollow eyes don’t show a damn thing but fear as she looks you over, but it’s not you she’s afraid of. You know that. If
she sees the nail-studded bat in your fist, she doesn’t mention it. What good would it do? A black beetle works its way across the bar, cutting a path between you and saying everything that needs saying.
You stand at the bar and pick up the beer. It’s warm, and the first swig tastes like water that’s found a way to rot, but you finish the bottle before speaking again.
“How many folks are left?”
“A few dozen. Maybe forty, total.”
“Why don’t they leave?” you ask. “Why don’t you?”
She shrugs. Her expression doesn’t change. “What’s the point? You came back, didn’t you?”
You close your eyes as you return the bottle to the bar. Dust fills your lungs, and you think about how it’s all falling apart, how maybe it isn’t even worth saving. Deep down, however, you know it won’t stop with Dawson. If the thing in the ravine—the thing that stretched out Chris’s guts—finishes off the town, it’ll move on. It’ll get bigger and hungrier, and then there won’t be a damn thing out there that can stop it. Best to shut it down now, do what these ignorant bastards refused to do, what you spent so much time afraid to do.
“How about another?” you ask.
The bartender nods, and as she reaches behind the bar for another warm beer, you realize just how sad she looks, how tired and lost and ready to give up.
“You really going to finish it?” she asks as she sets down the beer.
“Really gonna try.”
She glances at the floor, a little girl afraid to ask her mama for permission.
“Yeah?” you ask.
“In case you don’t kill it…”
“You serious?”
She nods. A single tear cuts a track through the dirt on her face. “Please. I’m tired of it. Just exhausted.”
“I’m going to kill it.”
“You’re going to try.” A long look into the shadows of her eyes tells you her hopelessness hasn’t turned into courage. It’s collapsed into something heavy and black.
“Fine.”
“I’ll let you finish your beer.”
The second beer tastes like broken promises as it slides down your throat. The bartender rubs a dirty rag over the old, cracked wood. Busy work, but what else is she going to do? As you finish, she folds the rag into a neat square and places it under the bar. She steps closer to the wood and closes her eyes. Her lips move as she crosses herself.
You shake your head. Jesus, this is really what she wants. Poor soul. She probably used to be pretty once, pretty and full of hope. But she pulled the short stick and got born in Dawson, so she never had a chance. Hell, you tried to run, and you still wound up drinking warm beer in this graveyard that used to be a town.
You cock back the stick and take a swing.
A cluster of beetles skitters out the door.
Your hands and arms continue to vibrate as you leave the bar and your car and walk toward the ravine and the thing that waits there. It lies about half a mile outside of Dawson, cut into the ground like an infected wound. The closer you get to the ravine, the more you can feel it, smell it. It’s sweet, like too much honeysuckle, and it vibrates in the pit of your stomach, spreading cold and warm in alternating waves. The beetles in the ravine’s depths call to you, a note that undulates up and down, loud and soft. If you didn’t know better, you’d let it hypnotize you. You’d just climb down into the ravine and never return.
Your knuckles burn around the ugly stick’s handle. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t let go now. It’s a part of you, burned into your palm by violence. Without it, you’re nothing but piss-your-pants scared, nothing but another meal. At least the stick in your fist gives you a fighting chance.
Beetles scurry past your feet, racing you. Their many footsteps sound like bacon sizzling in a skillet. You don’t remember ever seeing so many as a child, not even as a teenager, when the duty of feeding the thing fell to you and Chris. The thing in the ravine must have grown. Jesus, how big could it be?
You reach the edge of the ravine and look down into the wound. A black mass of beetles writhes across the ground, twisting around the trees that somehow still grow there. The trees cast shadows, and you know what’s waiting in there. It’s the thing that’s held Dawson in its strange grip for decades now, probably a century or more. The only thing you don’t know is how big it’s grown. You swallow once, hard, and you know only the sound of thousands of beetles keeps you from hearing it lurch down your throat.
“Remember me?” you ask as you look into the trees. “I bet you do.”
Deep inside the stand of trees, something bristles. The beetles around your feet chitter.
You start down the ravine’s side. The chorus of insects grows louder. You won’t fail like last time. You can’t. Chris isn’t here to save you.
The old man said he didn’t understand, that he’d lived in Dawson his entire life and never been called. You tried to ignore the desperate, pleading look in his milky, cataract-clouded eyes as you grabbed one arm and Chris grabbed the other, but you already felt a worm of doubt and weakness in your belly, awake and beginning to twist.
“Think of him as an it,” Chris had told him. “Just food, man. That’s all.”
You tried. The entire drive to the ravine, you tried to ignore its begging and pleading, because food doesn’t talk, not when it’s stuck in the backseat with its hands bound. Besides, this was your first time. You’d been chosen, and you wanted to do the job right. That meant not caving in just because the old man you were supposed to feed the thing in the ravine couldn’t stop jawing.
But it didn’t matter. Once you led it into that ravine like an open wound, its words cut right through to the middle of you, and all you could do was shove it to the ground and hope for the best. Then, the old man kept moving, crawling or maybe dragging itself—himself—toward you. You felt beetles crawl over the backs of your hands, and then Chris stepped past you with the rock and put the old man out of his—its—misery.
“This will get easier,” Chris said. “Promise.”
Instead of waiting to see, you left before the next feeding.
Maybe Chris finally lost his nerve. Maybe he just grew tired, and the thing in the ravine knew it was time to replace its keeper. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Like it or not, you’re still one of the keepers, and it falls to you to either feed it or kill it, and just because no one’s tried to kill it before doesn’t mean it can’t die.
You reach the ravine’s floor, the song of beetles a screech in your ears. The insects swarm up your legs and down your arm, biting your hand, trying to make you drop the ugly stick. Only you refuse to let go. The hunk of wood and nails in your fist is a lifeline, and you aren’t anywhere near ready to let go.
“C’mon,” you spit between your teeth. Your eyes lock on the woods, waiting for the shadows to move. “Come get your goddamn supper.”
Something moves to your right. You glance, thinking it might be an attack, and see the beetles part. They reveal a skeleton, bleached and picked clean. It’s a thin set of bones, still posed as if crawling or maybe dragging itself, begging the entire time, and the crack in the back of its skull is a wicked reminder of how badly you failed before.
“Fuck you,” you say, and the beetles fall over the bones once more.
Wood cracks, crunches, and you snap your head back to the stand of trees. You feel hot breath, thick and sweet like too much honeysuckle, and more insects swarm up your body. You bat them away from your face, your eyes, try to ignore their bites on your hands and the softer parts of your flesh.
You’re going to save a town, maybe the world. Just you and your ugly stick.
The trees part, and a black thing out of a child’s nightmare looms over you, milky eyes narrowed and peering down at you. Teeth gleam, and a white tongue darts forward like a taunt. For a brief moment, you wonder if the thing can smile. Then, you cast the thought aside. Time to take your shot.
You cock back the stick and swing.
A
RMAGEDDON, NOW AVAILABLE IN HIGH DEFINITION
Static.
Static.
Test pattern.
Static.
Picture.
The sudden appearance of an actual program on the sixty-five-inch plasma monster made Tabby Henson blink. She stared at the screen with wide eyes, trying to make some sense out of it. She saw a news desk—a graphic told her she was watching CNN—with a dead body laid out across it. The body used to be a man; now it was a mess. Its chest and stomach had been torn open, pale flaps of skin pulled back and left to hang. She noticed a few white ribs, broken and jagged, pointing at the studio lights. The man’s face was peaceful underneath a splattered mask of blood. A fly settled on the tip of his nose and then took off again in stunning detail.
It dawned on Tabby that she’d already seen this one.
“Huh.” She leaned forward and sucked up another line of coke from the mirror in front of her. Five lines left on the glass, then another twelve on the marble coffee table. What would she do when it was all gone? Maybe call Big Davey. He always had a score ready to sell. Not that Tabby ever paid for her drugs. Big Davey was a starfucker of the highest and strangest order. As long as he got to suck her toes for a few minutes, he’d happily leave some coke behind. And heroin cost only a few slaps across her bare bottom. Not a bad deal, considering today’s prices.
Selected Stories Page 5
